This blog was initially launched as a resource for Ron Mohring's Working Class Literature course. New poems are posted irregularly. All are welcome to share and comment on poems by and about work and the working classes. To suggest a poem for inclusion or a book for the recommended reading list, please email ron dot mohring at gmail dot com; put Working Class Poems in your subject line. Thanks.

5.13.2009

The Last Day

They also serve who stand and wait. —Milton

The billowing steam’s hissing whitenessFades, cloud-like into a frost blue sky.The warning whine of a crane’s sirenDiminishes to nothingness . . .The yard engine’s forceful gruntsEase to an unaccustomed quiet.The black stacks become grotesque obelisksIn a graveyard of rusting remains—Dedicated to the blood, sweat and tearsOf our fathers, and their fathers.The echoes of clanging pipe and steelAre all the sound that’s leftTo touch the straining earsOf those who stand—and wait.